The Emancipation of Me Me
Oh, aren't I clever! Yeah, I love not-too-subtle pop culture references with a cheesy twist. However, the title to this here Xanga entry really IS apropos. I admit that sometimes I get paid to sit around and talk; watch TV; go to movies; play Bocci Ball. I realized last night, however, that sometimes it's still just not worth the money.
Let me back up by saying that my staff here at the group home pretty much rocks the friggin' casbah. Yeah. Kids run away, they throw things at us, they steal from us, and they sling obscene epithets learned, I'm sure, from the inside of some bathroom stall in the downtown core. And yet...and yet...well, we simply continue to do our job, and we do it with a swanky swagger, if I may boast a tad.
To make a long story short, one of my co-workers wrangled tickets for our three group home girls to see slatternly songstress, Mariah Carey, in all her cyprian glory. It may seem simple: collect tickets, go to said concert, leave said concert, giggle and titter all-the-while, simultaneously driving male youth worker mad in the process. This is a reasonable assessment....except that said concert occured a thirty-minute drive from our group home, and ended a good thirty minutes after my shift was supposed to end. And all THAT to say, that I ended up working a hefty 11.5 hour shift at the group home, which culminated in the aforementioned giggling and tittering and "Andrew, turn up Sexy Back! Louder! LOUDER!" So help me God, if I have to hear how JT's bringing sexy back one more time. I tell you what, I'm about to bring corporal punishment back.** Let's see how that flies! It'll be MY number one single. Heh.
As it turns out, Busta Rhymes was the opening act. Damn...now that would have been cool. Alas....
**If any government worker or Alberta Children's Services employee reads this, I'm totally joking about the corporal punishment thing. Sort of.
I'm in Montana for the weekend, with my dad. It's a fun time. Only a five-hour drive and very picturesque. I'll try to take as many pictures as I can, but I hate looking the tourist. Alas....I should be used to that by now.
My dad should be a bartender or a cab driver. People spill their problems to him very easily, apparently. The man who, immediately before me, left the internet station at this coffee shop, is now telling my dad about his co-dependant relationship, his wife named Edna and his son named Ernie, how he moved to a different bed, how he took Amtrak to Montana to get away, but now wants a refund on his ticket, and how Amtrak isn't cooperating. Now he's an architect, and now he's talking about his childhood. His dad. His dog. His truck. An old folks' home. Home repair. You name it. My dad's side of the conversation: uh-huh...mmm-hmmm...oh yeah?....ok, ok....right...
I simply don't have the patience.
I'm off to take pictures. See you, folks.
P.S. My dad just said, "Wow, imagine....yeah, I bet he did." Haha.
I find myself driving with the windows open. My ears are freezing cold, but the rest of me is toasty warm. It's invigorating. I also feel myself, as I drive past downtown, looking left, to the general vicinity of the one who's burned me so badly. I raise my fist in the air with one hand, turn up the music with the other, and leave the steering up to my now well-practiced knees. This is also invigorating. Something about being visibly angry to someone who can't even see or hear you sounds a bit crazy. Certainly the drivers next to me must think so. However...it's cathartic. And everyone needs a little of that once in a while.
Alanis Morissette sings that "the only way out is through." I usually agree with that. Until now. The only way out is around...and with a fist in the air.
I've been listening to lots of instrumental soundtracks lately. Beautiful. Lisa Gerrard is a genius. GENIUS. My typical book reading routine includes some instrumental music--not too loud--and a quiet place to recline. Lately, however, I haven't been very successful. All the elements are in place; the setting is perfect; everything is as it should be. But, I just can't get past the first few chapters of any book. I've tried Edith Wharton, Anne Tyler, John Irving, David Sedaris. All without success. Maybe it's just a dry spell. Maybe I watch too much TV on DVD. Hmmm....
Anyway, I'm outta' here. I hope you're all well.
P.S. Miss you too, Yule Buddy 
As I perused CNN online this morning, I came across an article in which "Pope Benedict XVI came under a hail of criticism from the Islamic world
Friday for comments he made earlier in the week regarding the Prophet
Mohammed and the Muslim faith, in some cities provoking street protests." This brand of Muslim, which hides behind burning effigies and blind, red hot hatred, cannot see beyond the cancerous cells within its own camp. It is, of course, much easier (and much safer, I'm sure) to criticize an eighty year-old man in a dress than it is to criticize a mobile band of zealots in dresses, each brandishing the polished brass trigger of a surface-to-air missile. When did it stop being cool to cry when people said something that offended you? Oh, I know: fourth grade. If I hung on the every word and ideological support of humanity at large, I'm sure I'd also be reduced to one in a gaggle of angry, red-faced "third-graders".
It also galls that, as I learned in another article, "Jihad Muslims" celebrated the destruction of the World Trade Center, citing this terror celebration as "...a cry of Jihad against unbelief and
oppression," the aim of remembering it to "revive the commandment
of Jihad among the youth of the [Muslim] nation..." Let me see if I'm getting this: demanding an apology for a (perceived) verbal slight whilst celebrating the cowardly murder of thousands of innocent victims? Hmmm...
I'm done. Like dinner. If you want the world to care (and you DO, or you wouldn't be demanding an apology for your spilled milk), I suggest a serious effort be put forth into ceasing the oxymoronic inner workings of a religion currently being torn asunder from the inside by inconsistencies and civil unrest. Oh, and high yield explosives.
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